Luna: New Moon

As the leader of the moon's newest "dragon", Adriana has wrested control of the moon's helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal Corporation and fought to earn her family's new status. Now, at the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation, Corta Helio, surrounded by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies - and each other.

The Dervish House

It begins with an explosion. Another day, another bus bomb. Everyone, it seems, is after a piece of Turkey. But the shockwaves from this random act of 21st century pandemic terrorism will ripple further and resonate louder than just Enginsoy Square. Welcome to the world of The Dervish House; the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. The year is 2027....

The Obelisk Gate: The Broken Earth, Book 2

This is the way the world ends, for the last time. The season of endings grows darker, as civilization fades into the long cold night. Essun - once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger - has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever. Far away, her daughter Nassun is growing in power - and her choices will break the world.

Brasyl

This is a story that begins in the favelas, the slums of Rio, and quickly expands to take in drugs, corruption, and a frightening new technology that allows access to all the multiple worlds that have slipped into existence in other planes everytime we make a decision. This is rich, epic science fiction that opens our eyes to the world around us and posits mind-blowing alternative sciences. It is a landmark work in modern science fiction from one of its most respected practitioners.

Altered Carbon

In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

The Years of Rice and Salt

It is the 14th century, and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur - the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe's population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? This is a look at the history that could have been - a history that stretches across centuries, a history that sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, a history that spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation.

Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek

What would the world look like if everybody had everything they wanted or needed? Trekonomics, the premier book in financial journalist Felix Salmon's imprint PiperText, approaches scarcity economics by coming at it backward - through thinking about a universe where scarcity does not exist. Delving deep into the details and intricacies of 24th-century society, Trekonomics explores post-scarcity and whether we, as humans, are equipped for it.

Consider Phlebas

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it....

Perdido Street Station

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores.

The Naked God: Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 3

Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn't been seen by humankind for 600 years; then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction.

The Reality Dysfunction: Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 1

In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems, and throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace.

Dark Intelligence

One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed... Thorvald Spear wakes in a hospital to find he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war that ended a century ago.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Blindsight

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

The Windup Girl

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman.

Fallen Dragon

In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative. His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation.

The Mechanical: The Alchemy Wars

Soon after the Dutch scientist and clockmaker Christiaan Huygens invented the very first Clakker in the seventeenth century, the Netherlands built a whole mechanical army. It wasn't long before a legion of clockwork fusiliers marched on Westminster, and the Netherlands became the world's sole superpower.

Aurora

A major new novel from one of science fiction's most powerful voices, Aurora tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers.

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.

Ship Breaker

In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota - and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life.

The Neutronium Alchemist: The Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 2

The ancient menace has finally escaped from Lalonde, shattering the Confederation's peaceful existence. Those who succumbed to it have acquired godlike powers but now follow a far-from-divine gospel as they advance inexorably from world to world. On planets and asteroids, individuals battle for survival against the strange and brutal forces unleashed upon the universe.

The Water Knife

In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, detective, leg breaker, assassin, and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel "cuts" water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet while the poor get nothing but dust.

Blue Remembered Earth

Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds holds a well-deserved place “among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." (Publishers Weekly). In Blue Remembered Earth, Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to study the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But when his space-explorer grandmother dies, secrets come to light and Geoffrey is dispatched to the Moon to protect the family name - and prevent an impending catastrophe.

Neuromancer

Twenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down. The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene - it permeated into the collective consciousness, culture, science, and technology.Today, there is only one science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing the way into the information age and Internet society.

Publisher's Summary

August 15th, 2047. Happy 100th Birthday, India....

On the eve of Mother India's 100th birthday, 10 people are doing 10 very different things. In the next few weeks, all these people will be swept together to decide the fate of the nation. From gangsters to government advisors, from superstitious street-boys to scientists to computer-generated soap stars, River of Gods shows a civilization in flux - a river of gods.

River of Gods is an epic science fiction novel, as sprawling, vibrant and colourful as the sub-continent it describes. This is a novel that blew apart the narrow Anglo- and US-centric concerns of the genre, and ushered in a new global consciousness for science fiction as a whole.

McDonald has become well known for setting his stories outside of the traditional Euro-American context of most science fiction, and the effect is to lend an air of the exotic and strange to the near future he imagines. This novel, set in a balkanized India at the middle of the century, follows that pattern. Be warned that it starts slowly with a subplot that is somewhat removed from the main action, and it takes a long time to really get to the meat of the science fiction that drives the story. Like all McDonald novels it is very well written, with language that is often surprising in the way that good poetry can be, but it also flows languidly, just like the Ganges River from which it takes its title, taking its time to gather together the life streams of its many complicated characters. This is only sporadically a book of intense action and high excitement, but it is thought provoking and well crafted, with a nice twist at the end to resolve the major mystery at its heart. In the process it wrestles with big themes about the nature of intelligence and the meaning of life, drawing extensively from the cultural history of India and Hinduism in the process. Indeed, one of the major negatives about listening to this book rather than reading it is that you don’t have access to the excellent and informative Glossary included at the end. The narration is generally excellent, although Jonathan Keeble isn’t consistently good at American accents. All in all this is definitely worth a listen.

Definitely. It's rare to find a book about India, let alone a science fiction book. As an anthropology student of the subcontintent, I was pleased that McDonald just jumped into use of terms like bindi, crore, etc. without explanation (it wasn't until I hit the glossary at the end that I realized it even existed -- one of the few limitations of audio books).

What did you like best about this story?

The philosophy of self and the great portrayal of India.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I would have happily done so. I usually listen to books on my commute, but I found myself putting on my headphones at home whenever I could steal a few moments to listen.

Any additional comments?

I have a huge issue with readers (and directors!) who let pronunciation issues slip through. It seriously irked me that McDonald's phonetic shortening of "artificial intelligence" to aeai got pronounced as "ah-ay-ee". It's Ae-ai. Æ-I. A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Someone should have caught that and made a correction the first time it was uttered so strangely. It's like the director didn't even read the book.Keeble's performance was otherwise great -- doing distinct voices and accents for that many characters is more than admirable and I look forward to finding more books read by him.

Set in the near future artificial intelligence is emerging. There are different generations getting more and more advanced and regulated.

This specific story has so many mosaic pieces that it began to feel like a collage of stories layered in. If it was structured differently as a collection of novellas all taking place in one world, the layers wouldn't be so loosely connected.

The metaphysical warping of the space time continuum altering the perception of straight progression of cause and effect, was an interesting application... but in my cynical mind, I could also see it as a corner the author backed himself into.

I generally listen to audiobooks while I'm working on home improvements or doing something else so I'm not just sitting quietly focusing on the story. That being said I can follow a story just fine and have done so many hours. This story, however, jumps around so much that I have no idea what's going on. There are 4 simultaneous stories? 5? I don't know and they are not compelling enough for me to go back and try to stitch together. The reader is great. No complaints about the production.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The performance is remarkable. The reader brings to life characters speaking a variety of not only Indian accents but also American and Scottish.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

What does Jonathan Keeble bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Jonathan Keeble brought the characters to life.

Any additional comments?

While it is a remarkable vision of the future and a very insightful extension of current social, political, and technological trends, it contains several quite graphic episodes of violence and torture, scenes which made me fast forward twice a few minutes and finally put the book down before I was half finished.

If it weren't for the different voices of the reader, I would have been lost with all the names!... Was an interesting story but not really for me, I just really didn't get some of the plot twists, I just went "huh"?...

Thoroughly enjoyed, especially certain characters and concepts, yet I found myself having to look up definitions for many non-English words. Although informative and enlightening, the process was at times a wee bit irritating. I will recommend this book to friends.

This is a book that pulls in many aspects of India - the Hindu gods, the bureaucracy, the pace of life in the cities, technological research, cricket, the caste system and waiting for the monsoon - as a setting for an exciting near-future sci fi novel full of believable characters caught up in destiny and fighting to understand how we can come to terms with the evolution of computers and AIs.It is compulsive listening with amazing narration by Jonathan Keeble. A delicious length allowing the listener to get to know the characters and become drawn in to the multi stranded story. And if you like this one then try Ian McDonald's 'Brasyl' - another humdinger, this time set in Brasil.

Also sufficiently light on plot holes that I can't bring any to mind which really is saying something.

Narrator was amazing. Ok, this is my first audio book, and maybe I need to get used to listening to a bloke describe a sex scene from a woman's perspective, but whatever. I think he did a great job of the accents and making people sound different to each other.

I didn't feel amazingly emotionally energised afterwards, which is how I like to feel after enjoying fiction, but my memory of this is better than most science fiction I've read. Some great set pieces too.

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Ian Jamison

UK

10/5/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Simply brilliant - pity about pronunciation."

Would you listen to River of Gods again? Why?

This is a fantastic story, brilliantly put together, and quite stunning in it's range. It's generally well read in an exciting way. There are a number of real issues with pronunciation, which will grate on the ear if you;ve been to Varanasi, or visited a Shiva temple - but I'm being very picky with that. It's a super job.

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